ABSTRACT
Kafka’s Gregor Samsa represents one version of masculinity’s vanishing point. Here is another: after the British Football Association had charged two rival players with misconduct following a fight during a match between Chelsea and Liverpool in February 1999, the man who threw the first punch alleged that he had been provoked by his opponent’s cries of: ‘Come on, come on, give it to me up the arse.’ Of course, many would argue that verbal abuse is simply an inevitable part of a highly competitive game which thrives on insults and banter. But there are limits: racist taunts are now officially tolerated much less than they once were, whereas, according to a recent newspaper discussion of this episode, ‘homosexuality is still largely seen as a symptom of weakness and thus mercilessly pilloried’ (White 1999: 2). The article appeared under the headline ‘Queering the pitch’, punning on two senses of the word ‘queer’: as a pejorative term for ‘homosexual’ and as a verb meaning ‘to spoil’ or ‘to put out of order’.
